NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars has created some wonderful imagery since it landed on the planet’s surface back in December 2020. Its original two-year mission has been extended indefinitely and it continues to pump back a lot of data and gorgeous photography to earth. It’s even shot its own selfies .
Now, though, it’s really outdone itself, by capturing almost 1, Individual images over four days to create this stunning 1.8 billion pixel panorama . This beats its previous record by a whole half a gigapixel, and boy is it a beautiful image.
The image above was captured using the “Right Eye” telephoto lens (equivalent to (mm full-frame field of view) (atop its) (Mastcam) . It shows Glen Torridon, a region that Curiosity is currently exploring on the side of Mount Sharp. The telephoto lens on this camera allowed for some great detailed images, despite only being a 2-megapixel camera capable of producing 1600 × .
But this lens wouldn’t allow Curiosity itself to appear much in the shot. So, a second image was created. A 823 – megapixel view, using the “ Left Eye ”camera with its 34 mm full-frame equivalent field of view lens. It’s also 2-megapixels.
Over the four days, NASA says Curiosity required more than six and a half hours to capture all the individual shots, which had been pre-programmed by the Mastcam operators to ensure they were all pointing in the right away and that they focus was accurate. The images were shot between noon and 2pm “local Mars time” each day.
You can find out more about it and download the original full-size images over on the NASA website .
[via DPReview / Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS]
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